June 26, 2025
On Friday, May 30 2025 following a Kabbalat Shabbat service featuring music and liturgy by Israelis and Palestinians, 130 people came together in Beth Emet’s Crown Room to share stories of how we became engaged in the topic of the Israel/Palestine conflict and how our relationship with Israel has evolved and changed over the years. We paired facilitators in our community in their 20s and 30s with older facilitators from our salon groups to lead “around the dinner table” conversations characterized by empathy and respect. The evening ended with group conversations about what individuals needed to stay engaged in and advance this conversation in our Beth Emet community.
The event was the culmination of a year spent carving out time and space for thoughtful, difficult conversations with those with whom we are in community at a time when our nation and our own Jewish communities are polarized. One Congregation, Many Voices: Arguments for the Sake of Heaven combined intimate salon groups that typically met in members’ homes with congregation-wide events designed to deepen interpersonal connections and help us grapple with issues of our day. Salon facilitators drew from a diverse and curated list of resources, tailored discussion questions, and led conversations in ways that they felt would most speak to their group.
The first congregation-wide event followed days after the November 2024 election.
Sefi Kraut, Director of Mahloket Matters at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies, flew in from Jerusalem to help us learn the skills, mindset, and heartscape necessary to engage with each other on challenging topics for the sake of personal growth and deepened interpersonal connections. (Watch the session here.) Following that training, salon groups met to practice the skills by discussing a range of fiery op-eds published in the wake of the election.
In the winter, we each learned from a structured conversation with a member of a different generation, asking each other what we liked most and what was most challenging about being Jewish right now and explored how our answers to these questions overlapped or differed. We absorbed a range of research, talks, and public conversations on generational differences in our salon groups and came together for a March panel, “Building Understanding and Community Across Generations,” featuring congregants across age cohorts.
In spring, we turned our focus to Israel. Participants were encouraged to have a conversation with someone who had different views of the conflict, to further build listening skills. Salon groups discussed another set of challenging materials, culminating in the congregation-wide event, “Israeli/Palestinian Conflict: We Can’t Solve It, But We Can Transform How We Discuss It,” which allowed us to put the skills we’d been practicing all year into play around the topic that most divides Jewish community today.
Thank you to Rabbi London, Karen Isaacson, and Debbie Siegel-Acevedo for designing this year’s One Congregation, Many Voices program together with our salon facilitators; to all who participated in the salons, facilitated and hosted, and spoke at events; to Hannah Graham and Wendy Yanow for designing our closing session and training our facilitators; and, of course, to Pardes’ Sefi Kraut, for the grounding and inspiration.
The year-long program has left us reflecting on the following questions, among others:
As we think toward future programming, we’re looking to build on our successes and learn what didn’t work well to create an even stronger program to come. We’ll be sending a brief 10-question survey about the experience to those who participated in a salon group this year. This summer, we’ll gather the facilitators to share next year’s theme and begin to collaboratively design the program. If you have any questions about the One Congregation, Many Voices program, or are interested in joining a group next year, please send an email to Karen and Debbie at manyvoices@bethemet.org.
